I was about to make a suggestion of my own. Then I remembered that Faiter made a suggestion that was a little too similar.
If I might tac on my own little suggestion: In addition to the player being able to select which role your ship would play, wouldn't it be cool if we had a couple of custom roles? In addition to the roles that show up on Faiter's screen shot, how about a couple more options: Custom Group 1 & 2. This would be nice for those ships that are a little harder to define, or just don't quite fit in with the other preset roles.
Also, would it be possible to have simple "standing orders" associated with these roles? For example, if a ship was set to the Civilian group, could it just retreat automatically without any user input? If a ship was assigned to the Fire Support group, could it act like civilian ships act now?